The term “data card” is used in the art to define both financial cards and cards that contain non-financial data. The terms “financial card” or “financial credit cards” generally include credit cards, debit cards, A.T.M. cards and other cards that contain financial data. Examples of financial cards include general purpose financial credit cards e.g. VISA®, AMERICAN EXPRESS®, MASTERCARD®, and specific or special purpose credit cards such as oil company cards, department store cards, car rental cards, hotel cards, airline cards and the like.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,396,545 and 4,791,283 disclose typical state-of-the-art financial cards or transaction cards having a single magnetic stripe. The storage densities of single stripe magnetic cards are defined by the ANSI Standard Specifications. Prior art magnetically encoded cards may have up to three (3) data tracks as described in Table 1 below:
TABLE 1TrackDensityTargeted Application1  553 bytesDesigned for Airline Use2  200 bytesDesigned for Credit CardUse3  535 bytesNot for Genera use.reserved for Special Applications,Has Read/Write CapabilityTotal1,288 bytesStorage
A general trend presently exists to develop special purpose data cards for non-financial data applications such as for driver's licenses, building security, insurance identification, medical insurance identification, personal identification, inventory identification, baggage tags and the like.
Since the use of data cards including financial cards and other cards used for non-financial data purposes has proliferated significantly over the past several years, such data cards are being fabricated to be machine readable by a wide variety of reading devices and apparatus. As discussed above, typically a financial card has a single magnetic stripe having three (3) data tracks. Certain of the reading devices are used for “read-only” applications while other of the reading devices are used for “read and/or write” applications using one or more of the three (3) data tracks.
Other known prior art magnetically encodeable cards have at least two magnetic stripes, each of which may have one or more data tracks, for recording and writing data.
United States patents disclosing cards having one or more magnetic strips and/or semiconductor memory include U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,883,377; 5,844,230; 5,59,885 and 5,714,747. Certain of these cards using a semiconductor memory have storage densities as high as 8 kilobytes.
In order to facilitate reliable reading by such reading devices, financial cards are fabricated in accordance with standards promulgated by ANSI. For example, the American National Standard for Identification Cards—Physical Characteristics is covered by the ANSI/ISO/IEC 7810-1995 Standard (the “ANSI/ISO/IEC 7810-1995 Standard”). The ANSI/ISO/IEC 7810-1995 Standard specifies the physical characteristics of identifications including card materials, construction, characteristics and dimensions for various sizes of financial cards.
In addition, financial credit cards must comply with the American National Standard for Identification Cards—Recording Technique—Part 4: Location of Read-Only Magnetic Tracks—Tracks 1 and 2 which is covered by the ANSI/ISO/IEC 7811-4-1995 Standard (the “ANSI/ISO/IEC 7811-4-1995 Standard”) The ANSI/ISO/IEC 7811-4-1995 Standard specifies the location of a magnetic stripe area which defines a magnetic track for read-only magnetic recording, tracks 1 and 2 on identification cards. The ANSI/ISO/IEC 7811-4-1995 Standard specifically identifies the location of encoded data tracks, and the beginning and end of encoding.
Further, and depending on the application or use, financial credit cards must comply with the American National Standard for Identification Cards—Recording Technique—Part 5 Location of Read-Write Magnetic Tracks—Track 3 which is covered by the ANSI/ISO/IEC 7811-5-1995 Standard (the “ANSI/ISO/IEC 7811-5-1995 Standard”). The ANSI/ISO/IEC 7811-5-1995 Standard specifies the location of a magnetic stripe area which defines a magnetic track for read-write magnetic recording, track 3 on identification cards. The ANSI/ISO/IEC 7811-5-1995 Standard likewise specifically identifies the location of encoded data tracks, and the beginning and end of encoding.
Financial credit cards include a magnetic stripe area which complies with all of the ANSI Standards. Adherence to the ANSI Standards ensures that financial credit cards can accurately pass magnetic signals between the card reader transducer and the magnetic stripe area.
In the prior art known credit cards having a magnetic stripe area, the obverse side of the card generally contains indicia used to identify the individual to whom the credit card is issued, the issuing bank and other appropriate information. Information is stored on the magnetic stripe area in a “Biphase” mark coding technique in “magnetic domains” defined by a leading and an associated trailing magnetic flux reversal. The spacing between the magnetic domains defines the areal density of the magnetic storage material. Thus, the information bits (data) on a magnetic stripe area is represented by a sequence of binary ones and zeros as defined above.
The standard densities for financial or credit cards having magnetic stripe areas having three (3) data tracks which are in compliance with the ANSI Standards as described above are in the order of: (i) 210 bytes per inch (BPI) for track 1; (ii) in the order of 75 BPI for track 2 and (iii) in the order of 210 BPI for track 3. The transducers used in card reader are responsive to one or more tracks; e.g., any one or more of track 1, track 2 or track 3.
As the demand for financial or credit cards or data cards for non-financial uses increase, in certain applications it is desirable that the data card include the ability to record information from on-line card reading and data processing systems with enhanced security as well. As a result thereof, a category of data cards generally known as “Smart Cards”, otherwise generally known as “IC Cards”, have developed.
The Smart Card is often defined as an International Standards Organization (“ISO”) standard card with an embedded integrated circuit chip. The IC Card may include a microprocessor and a dedicated storage chip thereby resulting in such an IC Card being identified or referred to as a Smart Card. A Smart Card generally is in the form of a standard financial or credit card, but includes a microprocessing chip, memory and may even include a magnetic stripe area which can be read by a standard card reader for financial or credit cards.
One advantage of a Smart Card is that; the data stored therein is usually more secure than data stored on a magnetic stripe, and such data cannot be easily read from the Smart Card due to incorporation of encryption technology. Further, the Smart Card has the ability to store a larger quantity of data compared to a magnetic stripe and can be used in a variety of applications in cooperation with a card reading apparatus and data processing system.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,901,303 discloses an example of a Smart Card.
Other known storage devices used in non-card applications, such as for example, data storage mediums in hard disk, have storage densities greater than the storage densities of the known credit cards having one or more magnetic stripes including three (3) data tracks. A data storage medium in a hard disc drive typically has an 130 mm, 95 mm, 65 mm or 25 mm outer diameter with a hole in the middle for mounting the medium on a spindle motor. Hard disk drive medium is designed and manufactured for use as a rotating memory device with circumferential discrete data tracks. The medium, or disks, typically spin at a high rate of speed with the data tracks accessed by one or more a radially movable read/write heads.
It is known in the art to use horizontal recording media for recording magnetic signals. For horizontal recording, the easy axis of magnetization is parallel to the surface of the magnetic layer.
It is also known in the art to use vertical recording media for recording magnetic signals. An example of a vertical magnetic recording medium is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,687,712.
Through a plating and/or a sputter process, various types and layers of magnetic or non-magnetic materials are deposited on a round substrate which, when used in conjunction with a data recording head, can read and write data to the disk. The layer which provides the data memory is formed of a high coercive force magnetic material. This high coercive force magnetic layer is designed for maximum signal-to-noise ratio. This is attained by circumferential texturing, which is a mechanical process of scratching or buffering the disk substrate surface to provide circumferential anisotropy of the magnetic domains. Thereafter, the magnetic material is deposited on the circumferentially treated surface using known plating and/or sputtering technology.
Past and present data storage media have been manufactured in an ultra clean environment requiring Class 100, or better, clean rooms. Workers are required to be garmented wearing gloves, masks, hoods, smocks, and booties. Hard disk drive media is tested for electrical performance and number of errors (defects) before leaving the clean room. The media is placed in a sealed container in the clean room for shipment to the drive manufacturer.
The disk drive manufacturer must exercise similar clean room conditions in order to avoid damaging or contaminating the medium. Contamination or damage to the medium will cause an unacceptable error rate for the disk drive. To further insure data integrity, the drive manufacturer mounts the heads and medium, commonly called a head/disk assembly, inside a sealed disk drive cavity. As the medium rotates, it generates airflow over the head/disk assembly. Particles or contamination inside the drive are captured by filters located within the air flow. Capillary tubes and/or breather filters located in the lid of disk drive are used to equalize pressure and prevent moisture from entering the head/disk assembly.
The magnetic head(s) that perform the read/write operations can indent, mark or damage the medium through shock, vibration or improper head/medium design. The medium layers are very thin and fragile, on the order of a few microinches thick, and can be easily destroyed by mechanical damage imposed by the head. Non-operating environmental conditions, such as those normally found outside a clean room or outside a disk drive, can also easily render the medium unusable. Some of these major concerns which adversely affect medium quality and usability are:
Moisture, which can cause the Cobalt in the high coercive force magnetic layer to corrode which causes the medium surface to flake off or pit and compromise medium performance;
(b) Chemical contamination from out gassing of internal head/disk assembly components such as uncured epoxy and plasticizers from gaskets, and such chemical contamination can cause the head to stick to the media surface resulting in stopping the drive from spinning or causing a head/disk crash resulting in substantial loss of data;
(c) Particles inside the drive which can cause a head crash that can damage the medium beyond use;
(d) Handling damage by the disk or drive manufacturer including fingerprints, scratches, and indentations which can cause nonreversible loss of data;
(e) Shock and vibration from improper drive design or use can cause a head crash that damages the medium beyond use; and
(f) Poorly designed drives can fail during drive power up cycles due to high stiction, friction, temperature/humidity conditions or improper lubricant conditions.
A hard disk drive medium has no direct means to prevent demagnetization by stray magnetic fields should the drive medium be exposed to a stray field having sufficient magnetic field strength to erase the recorded data. Further, no surface of hard disk drive medium readily permits cleaning, and there are no known commercial hard disk drives that provide a means to clean the medium. For example, fingerprints cannot easily be removed from the surface of a hard disk drive medium.
Further, any attempts to use a hard disk drive magnetic medium outside of its intended clean and protected environment has been unsuccessful for a number of reasons, such as those discussed above.
As the demand for improved portable cards having increased memory storage capacity, such as credit cards, non-financial cards, transaction cards and the like increases, the driving factor as to the likely success or failure of an improved card is directly related to: (a) the storage densities available in such a card for storing and retrieving data; (b) the integrity of the magnetically encoded data in such a card; and (c) its ability to resist mechanical, chemical and magnetic degradation in an unprotected environment; such as in an ambient natural atmosphere operating environment in which financial and non-financial cards are used.
The magnetic disk media in known rigid disk drives are not designed to withstand even the most minor surface damage or degradation. The magnetic disk media for use inside the profoundly clean disk drive has a very hard but thin overcoat or protective layer. That overcoat or protective layer is typically diamond-like carbon on the order of 50 Angstroms to 300 Angstroms thick and is primarily used to control corrosion of the underlying cobalt based high coercivity layer. The underlying magnetic high coercivity film is also very thin, in the order of 150 to 500 Angstroms.
Since the protective layer includes at least one layer of a highly magnetic permeable material, the added thickness of this highly magnetic permeable material does not appear to increase the magnetic separation loss during read back as reported in U.S. Pat. No. 5,041,922.
The most prevalent type of media construction for use in hard disk drives is an aluminum substrate with a thick layer of Nickel Phosphor plated on the surface for polishing. This is an underlayer to the high coercivity magnetics. The Nickel Phosphor layer is typically 10 to 12 microns thick and is used to provide a material that can be subsequently polished to a smoother finish than the aluminum surface.
Hard disk drive media substrate range in thickness from 0.020 inches to 0.050 inches. Thinner substrates are desirable in order to be able to package more disks in the disk drive but have the problem of mechanical flutter, especially at high RPM. None of these substrates are bendable. A large bend radius of 20 inches will result in permanent deformation of the disk. A bend radius of less than 20 inches will result in permanent deformation as well as fracturing of the thick Nickel Phosphor layer. This fracturing of the Nickel Phosphor will propagate through the high coercivity magnetic layer rendering the media useless as a storage device.
No thick Nickel Phosphor underlayer is used on the portable card of the present invention. Therefore, fracturing problems associated with a thick Nickel Phosphor are avoided.
The portable card structure allows a card to be bendable to a degree depending upon the thickness and material of the substrate. For example, on one extreme are thick cards having a substrate formed of Zirconium. Such cards are 0.020 inches thick and can be bendable to a radius of approximately 10 inches. Another type of card uses a plastic substrate. Such cards are 0.030 inches thick and are bendable to a radius of approximately 4 inches. A thin card, such as a card having a substrate, formed of stainless steel, which is in the order of 0.005 inches thick and are bendable to a radius in excess of 4 inches without fracturing or becoming permanently deformed.
The protective coating of the present invention can be used with such cards in all forms of data storage devices, data storage sections, data storage medium and recording mediums. The known prior art media used for disk drive including the unabradable, thin protective coatings are not capable of being used in such portable cards.